An exclusive analysis of over 100 million meteorological data points shows that every major city in Europe is warmer in the 21st century than it was in the 20th. Subarctic regions, Andalusia and southern Romania are most affected.
In December 2015, 195 members of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed to “limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above preindustrial levels” in the Paris Agreement. For several cities in Europe, home to millions, the 1.5°C threshold has already been reached. An exclusive investigation by the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet) shows that in the Nordic and Baltic regions, in much of Andalusia and in South-Eastern Romania, average temperatures in the 21st century were already much warmer, sometimes by several degrees, than in the 20th century, already affecting the life expectancy of Europeans, their health and well-being.The 1.5°C temperature increase is a global target and areas that are warming faster are not off-track from this goal; scientists have expected for decades that polar regions would warm more than areas closer to the equator.